Deliverance
by Long-Haired Nick
Summary: Six months after stopping Tricell from unleashing a deadly combination of the T-Virus and Las Plagas, Claire Redfield has joined Leon in working for a secret government agency. But her very first official mission might be her toughest experience yet.


**Resident Evil: Deliverance**

Author's Note: This is for anyone who read my other RE fic, Remnants. I hope this one ends up being better than my last one.

**Chapter 1 – The Ultimatum**

It'd been a long, boring drive. Everyone knew Leon hated helicopters, so specific people in the agency always made sure he had to take a chopper wherever he needed to go, whenever possible. He hated it, and over time it had brought a smile to Claire's face as well. But Leon knew something that the rest of the agency didn't: Claire hated long drives. So on her first mission since joining the government agency Leon had been forced into fourteen years ago, Claire was made to drive to the old, run-down factory out in the middle of nowhere – without her Harley.

Claire saw the single jeep parked outside of a rather shabby old wooden building and slowed to a crawl. The Hummer's engine rumbled loudly before coming to a complete stop as Claire turned the key in the ignition. The sun was bright; it was 2pm. It beat down on Claire's exposed shoulders with nuclear ferocity. She toddled lazily over to the jeep, saw it was marked with the local Sheriff's insignia, and shook her head. _Why did they send this turkey out here for?_

"Care to explain why I dragged my aging corpse out here?" an officer said, stepping out of the jeep.

His handgun swayed loosely in its holster by his hip as he walked towards Claire.

"Not really," she started, deliberately being smug, "you can wait here if you like."

"Oh-ho! Pretty _and_ a smart mouth."

The officer smiled tastelessly at her. He started checking her out, his eyes working their way from Claire's thighs to her chest, then settling back on her face. _I'll play it a bit more, _she thought to herself.

Claire was getting used to all the attention. She'd always been used to guys acting this way around her, in fact she was _comfortable_ with it. That's why she dressed the way she did. She didn't care if guys wanted to let their jaws drop, as long as they stayed out of the way. Sometimes it helped _keep_ them out of the way. What she _wasn't_ used to was people in high positions – police officers, government figures, division heads, etc. – being able to get away with saying whatever they wanted to her, no matter who was present or how it inhibited her job. Leon had told her to expect it, that it was "just their insecurities. They're just a little frightened 'cause you're better than they are." But it didn't feel like that. It felt like they all just wanted to rip her pants off and take it in turns. Leon had already stuck up for her too many times, and he felt bad that she was being treated this way. After all, it was his idea that she join the agency in the first place. He'd even offered to take this mission instead of her, which was quickly knocked back.

The whole thing was a farce. Local police had received a call from someone anonymous, saying there was an unusually high level of chemical activity coming from an area two hours drive west of town. Of course, being that it could be a biohazard, they'd sent Claire in. Obviously it was a joke; there was no way it would be anything serious. "Let's just send in the rookie," they'd said. _I survived Raccoon City and Rockfort Island so I could check out a chemical spill? Screw this,_ she'd thought at the time.

It'd been going on for a few months now. Ever since she started her initial training, all the men had been hassling her. Over time, however, she'd learned to deal with it. She'd even used it to her advantage once or twice. Sparring was especially fun. She'd lost count of the amount of guys she'd practiced with and humiliated. So this one police officer was _nothing_.

Claire walked as sexily as she knew how towards the officer until she was right in his face. She put her hands on his chest and slid them slowly down towards his crotch.

"Hey, what are you doing?" The officer said nervously.

Claire just smiled sweetly up at him as she ran her fingers lightly down his belly, at the same time secretly grabbing his gun from its holster. Just as the officer started to enjoy himself, Claire pushed the end of the nine-millimetre's barrel against the officer's neck.

"Whoa, what the hell-?"

"You were told a government agent was coming, and that _you_ would be assisting _her_ in _her_ search of the abandoned _factory_." Claire emphasized her speech by pushing the handgun harder against his neck.

"Yeah, so?" The officer was sweating.

"So stop fooling around."

Claire changed her tone of voice to playful again.

"And…"

She smiled, pushing off the officer and giving him some breathing space. She ran the barrel of the officer's gun down his neck towards his groin, and tapped the bulge lightly. The officer grunted in pain.

"…soften up a bit. You're way too tense."

Claire giggled as she handed back the gun, showing him her ID as she spoke.

"Agent Claire Redfield. And you are?"

"Officer Micky Davis. Don't scare me like that, girl." Davis took a deep breath, and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

"Don't call me girl, and I might consider it."

Claire walked back towards her hummer, retrieving an electronic meter and her weapons.

"Here," she threw Davis the meter. "turn it on, and if the needle goes into the yellow, let me know."

"I drove for two hours so I could check a meter?" Davis grumbled.

"No, but you need to make yourself useful in the mean time."

"Right…" Davis muttered, turning the device on.

It showed the needle hovering just above zero.

"Nothing. There's nothing here."

"Change the settings, there should be three others." Claire told him as she strapped her belt on.

It was just a standard leather utility belt which held a holster, six compartments for extra clips and a larger compartment for anything else. Davis flicked through the other settings on the meter.

"Nope, nothing on these either."

"Good." Claire said, taking the meter off of him and putting it back in the hummer.

"Why good? We both drove for hours to get here, now there's nothing to look at? What's good about that?"

"It's good because this'll take a lot less time if we don't have to dress up in suits."

"I see…" Davis started to say, but was cut off when he noticed Claire had changed out of the loose black cargo pants she'd been wearing into a very short, very snug pair of black denim shorts. Claire was about to strap her spare handgun holster to her leg when she noticed him gawking at her again. _Spare me,_ she rolled her eyes to herself.

"So…is that regular government agent uniform? Or am I blessed?" The officer said slimily.

Claire almost laughed out loud, but managed to suppress it to a muted giggle.

"Is that the best you can do? You better start thinking with your brain instead of your cock if you want _my_ attention."

Davis stood there dumbfounded, obviously not used to being shut down so quickly.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Davis complained.

Claire didn't respond.

"Hey! I'm talking to you, girly!"

Claire grabbed him by the collar of his neatly pressed uniform and stood in his face.

"You listen to _me_. I'm in charge here, this is _my_ operation, and your orders are to _follow_ and _respect_ me. If you can't do either of those, then tell me now so I can arrange for someone to replace you tomorrow."

Davis stood and looked at his shoes for a few seconds before looking up at Claire's face again to respond.

"I'll be good…_Agent_."

Claire smiled sweetly at him again.

"Good. Now let's get going."

Claire strapped her second gun holster to her right thigh and started towards the only door on the outside of the shabby building, but was interrupted by her radio beeping.

"Redfield." She responded.

"_Claire, what's the situation there?_" came Leon's voice.

"Sorry, Leon. It took a little longer to get here than I thought. And then there's the local police." Claire smiled as she turned and grinned at Davis.

"_No problem. Just get in there, check it out, and call back. Okay?_"

"Sure, speak to you soon."

Claire returned the radio to her belt and drew her primary handgun, a SIG-Sauer P226 forty-caliber, similar to her brother's, but with bigger bullets. She made her way to the door again, knee high black military style leather boots kicking up dust at Davis as she reached it. She noticed it was locked with a chain and padlock, so she tapped on it with her handgun three times.

"Hello? Is anyone home? This is the police." She said casually.

No response.

"I said, is anyone home?"

Still nothing.

"If you do not respond, I'll be forced to break down the door."

Silence.

Claire took a few steps back, then ran forward and kicked the door on the opposite side to the lock. The door broke easily off its hinges and hung lifelessly from the chain, revealing the dustiest, most ordinary looking abandoned factory-type place she'd ever seen. It was stereotypical right down to the dusty, decades-old machinery.

"Oh shit, there's nothing here. We're wasting our time!" Davis yelled.

He was getting frustrated, and with good reason. Today he'd driven two hours in the hot sun by himself, got rejected and humiliated by a beautiful government agent, and realised he'd done all that for no reason.

Claire was looking around at something, but Davis couldn't see anything interesting.

"What the hell are you doing? Let's just go."

"No, you're staying right here." Claire said, distracted by something on the roof.

"To _hell_ with this." Davis said, then started walking off back to his jeep.

"GET BACK HERE!" Claire yelled desperately. "DAVIS! STOP!"

Just as Davis reached the door, he turned around to see what Claire was yelling about.

"DIVE!" She yelled.

Davis dived, but it took him a moment to register the command. As Davis' body went horizontal, two huge blades dropped from the ceiling: one in front of the door, and one two feet behind it. The second one sliced Davis neatly in two, his torso and head making the rest of the dive on their own. Davis sputtered, blood coming to his lips and dribbling out his mouth.

"Shit!" Claire put her hand to her mouth, then ran over to Davis' top half.

There was no way Davis would ever get up again. Claire stood, analyzing the room once more as she tried to push Davis from her mind. A single tear rolled down her cheek as she noted to herself that she couldn't see any more traps. She _could_ see a phone line, though, so she traced the phone line to an old Nineteen-Eighties style phone on the other side of the factory floor. As she was about to make her way there, she heard a groan from the ground behind her.

_Couldn't be…_

Davis was moaning on the ground, his arms desperately reaching for Claire. She screeched as she felt his fingers gripping her ankle through her thick leather boots. Quickly turning around, she drew her SIG P226 and aimed at Davis' head. Davis just moaned, still reaching out for her. His lower body was still lying lifelessly ten feet away, a pool of thick blood surrounding it. Claire looked back at Davis' top half, at his cold, dead eyes.

"I know that look…but that's impossible…there's _no way_…"

Claire leveled the gun at the top of Davis' forehead and squeezed the trigger tightly. The bullet ripped Davis' head apart, taking the entire top part of his skull and brain with it. He fell heavily to the ground and didn't move. Claire knelt down next to Davis' corpse, checking out the blood gathering on the dusty ground.

"Coagulating…all of it…already…" she whispered to herself.

_It's the T-Virus. I better call Leon –_

Her thoughts were interrupted by the eighties-style phone. She ran over to it and picked it up, not knowing quite what to expect.

"You're the agent, right?" said an obviously electronically modified voice.

"I might be. Who are you and what do you think I'm going to do for you?"

"Straight to the point…" The voice started laughing, "I like that in a woman. But you _are_ going to be doing something for me, whether you like the idea of that or not. You see, myself and my associates have a little plan all hatched up here, and we'd very much like you to tell your government friends all about it."  
"Right, so we can bring all our resources into one place while you rob something else a hundred miles away?" Claire said, trying to sound as irritated as she could.

"Maybe, but that's for us to know." The voice continued. "Tell your boss…Agent _Kennedy_…that there's a building in town, a very big building, that's going to be locked down not long after we end our stimulating conversation here. If our demands aren't met, we're going to release your favourite virus into that building."  
"No…" Claire whispered, then covered her mouth as she realised she'd broken a golden rule of negotiation.

"Ah…so you're _Claire Redfield_ then." The voice sounded pleased now. "Or _Rebecca Chambers_. Either way, you'll know _exactly_ what's at stake here. You tell them about the building, and you tell them they have twelve hours, on the hour, to find one-hundred billion US dollars, or I release the virus into the building, followed by something a little more spectacular. Okay? You can handle that for me, can't you?"

"You bastard! That virus is _not_ something to be used as a tool! And we won't be-"

"-Good day. The coordinates of the building will be written on Micky's jeep."

The phone went dead, and Claire was left standing there in the dead factory, trying to make sense of what had just happened. She looked at her watch – 16:58. At five AM tomorrow morning, the T-Virus would be released in another American urban centre.

* * *

"Leon, it's Claire."

"_Go ahead, Claire."_

Claire leaned against the hood of her hummer; she was now at the local airstrip waiting on a government chopper to take her home.

"The factory was a trap. The officer sent to accompany me was killed trying to escape."

"_Perpetrators?"_

"Wait, there's more, Leon. The trap was a guillotine laced with the T-Virus."

"_The T-Virus? That's not good."_

"Ya…" Claire trailed off. "It sounds like some sort of revenge thing. It's a terrorist plot. They've got a building in town totally locked down, and they're threatening to release the virus into it at 5am tomorrow if they don't get a hundred billion. Here, I'll send you the coordinates of the building."

Claire whipped out her PDA and punched in a few numbers, then hit the 'send' button.

"They'll also do something more 'spectacular', is how the guy put it."

"_Well, good thing we've done this before."_

"There's still more. They know you. They asked me to tell you specifically, and he practically spat your name at me."

"_Can't win 'em all."_

"Leon, this is serious!" Claire knew he was kidding around on purpose to annoy her. "They know _you_, but they don't know who _I_ am."

"_They don't? How do you know?"_

"He picked up that it was someone who'd had experience with the virus, but he didn't know if it was me or Rebecca. He assumed it was me, but he also said 'or Rebecca Chambers'."

Leon paused for a few seconds.

"Leon? You there?"

"_Yeah, I'm here. We just found out that Rebecca's near that building. This could work to our advantage."_

"How do you figure that?"

"_If they assume it's either one of you, you could play them accordingly. Pretend you're Rebecca, then go and do Claire things, and vice-versa."_

"I see…"

"_Well, the chopper's on its way. Should be there within 10. I'll be on the radio if you need me."_

"Okay Leon."

"_Oh and another thing. We just finished speaking to Becky. She's going in with you as part of your team, but it's to be kept quiet. No one except you two can know who she is."_

"Why?"

"_If any of this terrorist organisation's members are in the building, they might know you. We don't want them recognizing her too. It'll spoil the fun."_

"Right. I'll speak to you soon."

Claire sighed and gathered her thoughts, trying to put all this new information into some sort of order. _This agent stuff is harder than it looks._

* * *

"Claire!" came a squeak from Claire's right.

She turned to see who it was, but didn't recognize her.

"I'm sorry, but do I know you?" Claire asked politely.

The woman removed her black beret and shades, revealing a beautiful girl with shoulder-length brown hair tied in a ponytail, bright green eyes and perfect teeth. She wore regular field agent blacks – cargo pants, short sleeved black shirt and utility vest – albeit a lot tighter than the regular issue. She looked no older than twenty.

"Rebecca! Great to see you!"

Claire gave her a big hug before getting back to serious-mode.

"So no one can know you're here?" Claire asked.

"Nope. Not a soul." She smiled innocently. "Leon told me we're supposed to screw with their heads a bit, pretend to be each other and get up to mischief."

"So he says." Claire rolled her eyes. "But you know Leon, it's hard to know _exactly_ what he means _all_ the time."

"Got that right. Well, I'm meant to be trying to find this virus and a way to stop it leaking in. Any ideas?" Rebecca asked.

"You're the bio-chemist. I just shoot things" Claire smiled.

"Well, if I was gonna put a virus into a whole building, I'd say it'd be in the air-conditioning. That's a given. So where is it in _this_ building?"

"Not sure. Let me ask Leon."

Claire pulled her PDA out and called Leon.

"_What's up?"_ Leon's voice came through before his picture fizzled onto the screen.

"We need to know where the air-conditioning system is located." Claire told him.

"_Right…"_

Leon turned away for a moment, typing something on a computer. He shook his head slightly, then more vigorously. After a few more shakes, he grinned and turned back to face Claire through the screen.

"_Top floor. But you might wanna check the roof first. That's where all the air comes into the building. Oh and Claire? Don't go yourself."_

"Got it. Thanks Leon."

Claire tapped the screen, ending the call, then put the PDA away into one of her vest pockets. She looked around for someone useless looking to send up to the roof and check it out. She spotted one, a youngish field operative who was standing in a group with two other guys. They were grinning absurdly and leaning up against an agency truck trying to look cool while they checked her and Becky out.

_Perfect._ Claire smiled.

"I'll be right back." She told Rebecca before approaching the three guys.

"Those aren't government issue shorts, are they Agent Redfield?" One of them sniggered while the other two laughed.

"No," Claire said sweetly, shifting her weight subtly and drawing their attention to her hips. "but you guys don't mind, do you? Is it a bit much?" She badly feigned ignorance.

"Oh no, sweetheart. We like your uniform." One of the other guys said. "Peterson here just thinks you'd look better without it."

They laughed again, the first guy – Peterson – winked at her. _They're so BAD at this._

"Well…I'll tell you what." Claire ambled up to Peterson slowly and suggestively. "If you can do something small for me first, I'll wear anything you want, big guy."

The three field operatives started hooting and whistling like a bunch of high-school kids.

"Oh I've got something in mind already, Agent." Peterson stepped closer to Claire. "So you just tell me what you want me to do for your sweet ass."

He grabbed Claire by the ass with both hands and gave it a little squeeze, pulling her in close to him. Claire smiled to herself as she rammed her forearm into Peterson's neck, pushing him against the truck and choking him. The other two got up immediately and tried to pull her off him.

"Uh uh uh, don't move or I'll rip his balls off." Claire reached down and took a handful, and Peterson winced. The other two backed away.

"If I tell Agent Kennedy about the way you touched me just now, he's probably not going to be too happy about it. So unless you want to be clearing your desk tomorrow with a broken face and no balls, I suggest you let go of my 'sweet ass' and do my chores."

Peterson let go of her ass, and the other two backed right off. Claire let him go and Peterson crumpled onto the ground in pain.

_I hope I don't have to do that too often…this acting sexy shit is getting old._

Once Peterson had recovered from Claire's grip, clearly seething from the embarrassment, he spoke again.

"So what am I supposed to do for you, Agent Redfield?" he spat.

"I want you to take a chopper to the roof. Try to find any devices attached to the ventilation, and get back to me. You two," Claire looked at Peterson's two buddies, "I want you to check out the air-conditioning control room for the building. It's on the top floor. Again, look for anything that might constitute a viral leak into the building's air-conditioning. If you find anything or don't find anything, call back and let me know. We don't enter until you've cleared it. Understand?"

"Yes, Agent Redfield." Peterson said, not happy about receiving the dirty work.

"And you two?" Claire said to the others.

"Yes ma'am." They said simultaneously.

"Good. Now get going. You've got an important job to do."

The three field agents took off for the nearest chopper as Claire walked back to Rebecca.

"What was that all about?" Becky asked her.

"The usual. These guys, they never learn. You gotta be tough to keep 'em away." Claire smiled.

"Looks like you don't have any trouble with that." Rebecca laughed, miming a squeezing motion with her hands. "Gotta try that myself some time!"

The two girls laughed about it for a while before heading over to the truck Claire had made a scene in front of moments earlier. They opened it up to reveal a small armory.

"Wow, you guys don't mess around, do you? It's sure different to my S.T.A.R.S. days. We got one handgun and a spare clip. You guys get everything but a rocket launcher."

"Oh we've got those too. They just don't let us use them all the time." Claire giggled.

Claire grabbed a belt like her own and threw it to Rebecca.

"Here, put this on."

Rebecca strapped the belt loosely around her hips while Claire fetched her some weapons. She grabbed an H&K MP5 machine gun, a Glock 30 nine-mill and some ammo. Rebecca put it all together on her person, then put her beret and shades back on. Claire already had her handgun and spare, so she just grabbed some more ammo.

"I gotta ask you, what's with the beret and shades?" Claire looked at Becky with a confused frown.

"It's so I don't get recognized, although in hindsight the shades weren't a good idea. The beret reminds me of Jill, though. I thought maybe if I wear one, I might be as good as she is."

Claire smiled. She didn't know Jill that well, but she knew enough about her to know that she was an _excellent_ agent and a wonderful person. The beret was a nice touch, and it suited Becky well.

The two girls caught up on what they'd been doing recently while they waited for a response from the field agents sent ahead. Apparently Rebecca had been offered several jobs in labs since she finished up in the police force after Raccoon City, and had taken one up, but hadn't been able to do the kind of research she wanted to. She explained to Claire that all she really wanted to do was research the T and G-viruses.

"But they wouldn't let me do it. There was some other guy already doing research for the government, and they needed to keep a lid on the whole thing so the public wouldn't find out. So I tried finding Chris and Jill again, and they told me they were going after Umbrella. I wanted to follow them, but they said they needed me here with Barry, so I stayed. Then after a while, Barry left. Said he was never coming back, and he'd had enough of Umbrella and viruses and fighting. I haven't seen him since, but I'd never seen him look so happy." Rebecca smiled and looked into the distance, at the darkening orange-red sky of sunset. "He's with his family now. That's the most important thing."  
"So what did you do after that?" Claire was intrigued by Rebecca's story.

"Well, after that, Chris and Jill came back from Russia. It'd been years, and I heard about Umbrella's fall before they got back. It was such a relief to see them alive, I didn't know what to expect the whole time they were gone. Somehow I knew they'd be back. If anyone could do it, Chris and Jill could. But it was such a _huge_ thing to be doing. Going all the way to Russia to take on the whole company at once?! But they came back. Jill got in contact with Carlos, a mercenary she met when she was escaping Raccoon, and told him where to find me. Ever since then, we've been running odd jobs and finding out bits and pieces of info for the BSAA. Freelance, you know?"

"How come you didn't join?" Claire asked.

"Well, we thought if we were connected to them, we wouldn't be able to get into some of the places we did. It was bad enough being a Raccoon survivor and an ex-S.T.A.R.S. member, but being a BSAA agent as well would have made it impossible." She explained.

"Fair enough. And that's when we met you last year." Claire continued.

"Yep!" Rebecca smiled at Claire and took her hand. "You know, Claire, it's good to be working with you properly. I don't miss working in labs. I'd rather be doing something to stop people like Wesker. It's all well and good to be finding out important things in the lab that help people, but what good does it do if we all die of a mystery virus released by some crazy company?"

Claire nodded. Rebecca made sense. She'd forgotten over time just how imperative it was that companies like Umbrella and Tricell and Wilpharma were stopped. That's why she wasn't a member of Terra Save anymore. There was only so much you could do to stop a monstrosity like the T-Virus by yelling at it loudly. Sometimes you had to go in there and squash it yourself.

Just as Claire's thoughts finished trailing off, her radio beeped and a voice came out of it.

"_Peterson here. There's some bomb-looking device attached to the top of the roof air-con vent. Has some canister attached to it. Blue stuff, looks kinda nasty."_

"Don't touch it, Peterson. That's probably the T-Virus."

"_Why not? I can probably disarm it if I try."_

"Don't touch it, Peterson, that's an _order_. If anything goes wrong, you'll kill the whole building."

"_Whoa there, Scotty. Williams here, don't touch it."_ Came one of the guys she'd sent to the control room. _ "There's a message here on a console that says '_Don't tamper with my toys, Agent.'_. It's probably booby trapped. Leave it alone."_

"_No way, I can do it. It's simple. All I have to do is unscrew this, and-"_

Peterson's voice suddenly stopped.

"_What's going on, Scott? The ventilation suddenly went berserk. It's on full. What the fuck did you do?"_

"_All I did was unscrew one corner of this thing, then it went ape-shit at me. That blue stuff's going straight into the vent. And it smells like shit. What did you say this stuff was, Redfield?"_

"PETERSON!" Claire screamed. "That's the T-VIRUS! Get away from it! Right now!"

"_Oh shit. How do I know if I'm infected or not?"_

"_Agent Redfield? I think it's venting into here too."_

"Williams, get yourselves OUT of there _right now!_ You have to make your way to the roof and hope to god that you don't breathe any of it in." Claire was livid.

"_Williams, I don't feel too good. Come help me, would ya?"_

"_Okay, I'll be right there buddy."_

"NO! Williams, go the _opposite direction!_ Exit through the building. It should take a few minutes for the virus to disperse throughout the whole building, so maybe you still have time to escape!"

"_No way, my friend needs my help. Hey, Bruno, where you going, man? Don't go that way, Scotty's upstairs! Fine, run, you fucking coward."_

Claire could only listen in horror as the two fools sealed their fate, and the fate of all the people locked inside the rest of the building. She listened to the third agent try desperately to open the door to the rest of the building, only to yell back that it was locked tight and couldn't be opened. She heard him shooting at the door with his machine gun, and screaming as he tried desperately to open it. She heard Williams' shocked cry as he saw what his friend Scott Peterson had turned into. And she heard the explosive splat as Williams' body hit the ground, hundreds of meters below the roof of the building he'd thrown himself off of.

Rebecca watched in horror as Williams' body literally exploded on impact with the ground, noting that it didn't look anything like what they showed in movies and TV shows. Williams' entire body was splattered and unrecognizable. Completely destroyed.

"Oh god…" she muttered softly.

Claire just shook her head and pulled the PDA out.

"Leon, we've got a problem."

"_Surprise me."_ Leon said dryly.

"The device that was supposed to release the T-Virus was right where we thought it'd be. Unfortunately, it was booby trapped, and one of your gung-ho field friends decided to try and disarm the thing himself. Now all three of the agents I sent up are dead, and the locked down building is now a locked down building with thousands of virus carriers swarming through it."

"_Shit." _Leon thought for a moment. _"Alright. So what do you wanna do? Blow it up?"_

Claire was about to agree when her radio went off. She answered it, not sure what to expect.

"_Agent."_ Spat the voice on the other end, the same one that had been on the phone in the abandoned factory.

"What do you want?"

"_You didn't listen to me, did you? Now I have a proposition for you. I want you to come inside. Not right now, in about twenty minutes when the virus is no longer airborne. I'll open the doors so you and your little team can come in, but I'm locking them as soon you're in. And if anyone else tries to come in too, I'm going to kill them myself. Understand?"_

"Why should I come in, just because you asked me nicely?"

"_You will come in, because I am going to receive the hundred billion dollars from you in person. I wasn't planning to set that thing off so soon, you've ruined everything, you careless bitch! Now if you don't come in and deliver me my money, I'm going to kill the entire city. You have until five AM to find me. If you are eaten by the carriers, or fail to locate me, the city dies. Twenty minutes until you can come in, Agent."_

The radio went dead, and Claire sighed loudly.

"Did you get all that, Leon?"

"_Sure did. I'm coming in. I'll be there as soon as I can, and I'll be on the PDA at all times if you need me. Go in there, and _BE CAREFUL._ You might have experience dealing with this kind of thing, but you're still human. And Claire?"_

"Yeah?"

"_Bring fire. Lots of fire. Can't risk them getting back up again if you're going to find this bastard before five in the morning."_

"Right…thanks, Leon. Will do."

"_See you soon, Claire. Stay alive, I wanna see you."_

Leon hung up, leaving Claire with so many mixed emotions, she didn't know what to think. She liked Leon a lot. And what he'd said had somewhat galvanized her willingness to stay alive no matter what. But at the same time, she was being forced into a very bad situation by a guy who obviously was a few beers short of a six-pack, and she didn't like that one bit.

"Claire, look."

Rebecca pointed to the building's upper levels.

"They're jumping." Claire said sadly.

Sure enough, people were screaming and jumping from all floors. Some looked to be nearly a hundred levels high.

"We have to stop this guy, Claire. These people didn't deserve this."

Rebecca's pleading eyes said it all. Claire looked at her watch: 21:50. She had seven hours to find this guy. Seven hours seemed like a lot, but she knew it wouldn't be that easy. For a start, she didn't know what this guy looked like, or even how his real voice sounded. Secondly, if it was like any of her other experiences, there were probably zombies everywhere and puzzles to sort out just to go from room to room.

"Come on, let's get everyone ready." Rebecca tugged on Claire's sleeve, and walked off to where the rest of the field agents were assembling.


End file.
